Common Ground
by Leraiv Snape
Summary: Part of the same universe as 'Daughter, Unacknowledged'. In the wake of the events of The Force Awakens, General Leia Organa reflects on all she lost - and has a surprising conversation that offers both healing and understanding with the one member of her family she has never wanted to speak to. Major spoilers for the seventh film in the STAR WARS universe.


Disclaimer: _STAR WARS_ and it's affiliates now belong to Disney, no copyright infringement intended.

A/N: This piece is set during the end of the newest STAR WARS film, and has major spoilers for _The Force Awakens_. Please enjoy!

Common Ground

The fire was dying. General Leia Organa stared into it, unseeing, her body so still an observer would have to check twice to see her breathing. The embers glowed orange as they cooled, wafting no more than a thin stream of smoke into the night sky.

Odd, how fire was comfort as well as danger. That with all the marvelous technology they had possessed for centuries, the general had craved this most primitive expression of it in her solitary grief.

Odd, too, that it should be her choice. Han's body had, after all, been immolated by flame only hours ago.

 _The base had ignited from the inside, the detonation from Chewie and Han's bombs ripping through the core, disrupting the flow of power from the nearby star._

" _There's always a way to blow it up."_

Han was dead before the reaction, before his body had hit the bottom of the chasm under the bridge where he'd confronted their son. But it was fire that had consumed him, leaving her without a body, denying her the right even to bury him.

Perhaps it was as well.

Water dripped from her chin. She hadn't noticed the tears leak from her eyes.

There was much she hadn't noticed in the past six hours.

She hadn't needed to see the girl's face when the _Falcon_ had landed.

" _I'll get her out on the_ Falcon. _"_

Hadn't needed to see the stoop in Chewie's massive shoulders. The lackluster life in both the giant wookie who'd known him for a lifetime and the slender young woman who had fiercely, if briefly, admired him.

But Leia had _felt_ him go long before they had landed, before they'd even left the Starkiller, _felt_ that loss from millions of miles away. Felt that thread snap, that life vanish. In all their years of separation following Ben's desertion, his fall to the Dark, she had always _known_ that Han was alive. In her bleakest, most helpless moments, that single strand of still-vibrant love had continued to resonate in her. Dim, so faint it was usually unreadable – a testament to Han's lack of the Force and her own refusal to learn – but _present_. She had not realized how large the hole would be when it snapped.

She hadn't felt anyone like that since—

She shied away from the memory, but General Organa was nothing if not a soldier. As militaristically dedicated to her own self-discipline as she had to be to others'. The complicated weave of her emotions surrounding her twin had to be examined, especially now, now that the map had been read. Now that Rey would begin her search for him come morning.

" _I have to go."_

The first time her brother had said that, they had been standing beneath the waxing-full planet of Endor on the forest moon, and he had left her with the wonderful knowledge that she had a dearly-loved brother – and the nearly-unbearable reality of their brutal sire. A father he had gone to face, to triumph over, to win back to the Light – at least to the extent that he had saved Luke. She wasn't sure, had never been able to bring herself to forgive enough, to know whether Vader's transformation extended beyond the Skywalker blood. She had been confused by Luke's determination to see the confrontation with his father through, and grateful past relief when she knew, she _felt,_ that he would return.

" _I have to go."_

The second time…she had been livid. She knew enough of her fragile Republic and the newly-formed Resistance Army to later put up a token shocked and dismayed protest at his disappearance, but she had known. Had known his reasoning and damned him for it. Had wanted more than anything to find him – though whether it was to cling to him as the last piece of her family or throttle him with her bare hands, she had never been able to discover.

She had spoken to him that dark, fateful morning for the last time…and she shivered now, despite the warm night and the fire.

Luke had been broken, ruined. The confidence that had driven him to face their father, to defy the Emperor, to scour the galaxy for those bearing a trace of the Force to train as new Jedi, had not so much vanished as been pulverized. And everything that made her brother Luke Skywalker – still alive and already a legend – had collapsed with it.

888

 _10 Years Ago_

Leia awoke suddenly, deeply unsettled. Even untrained, she could feel the Force grating in her bones, fraying her nerves, sparking in her blood.

She threw off the covers, sliding out of bed. Han slept soundly next to her, mouth slightly open, and despite her profound dis-ease, she smiled at the heedless picture her husband painted. Here in their apartment on Coruscant was the only place he allowed himself to sleep so completely. Aboard the _Falcon_ , or any other ship he might be commanding, he could not afford to be so totally relaxed.

The constant stress of raising a just government from the ashes of Empire was aging him before his time. Grey liberally streaked the dark hair now. Wrapping a thin coverlet around herself, Leia caught sight of herself in the large, plate-glass windows that overlooked the still-dark city. Her mouth twisted. The Rebellion and consequent formation of the New Republic had worn on them all. More than a few strands of grey graced her own head, and the straight lines stenciled across her forehead carried the weight of several worlds' worries.

She crossed the floor to stare, unseeing, at the silhouettes of the city the pre-dawn light was just beginning to fill in. She had no eyes for the people beginning to stir below her, the early-morning speeders and hovercraft starting their morning routes.

Prompted by the Force she had refused to learn to tame—

" _Leia…it's a gift. So few have it – and you're so strong. You should join me—"_

" _Just because you've managed to forgive Vader his innumerable sins doesn't mean that I have. I don't want the Force! Leave it, Luke!"_

—she gazed towards the stars above her, reaching in a way that she hadn't in years. She had sought out Ben a few times that first year he'd been training with his uncle, but out of respect for him as he grew (he'd already been fourteen when she and Han had decided to send him to train with Luke), she had gradually stopped, learning to be content with his infrequent holo-calls.

But this morning, something was wrong. Very wrong. She did not know if it was her own innate gift, or a warning from her son or brother—

The holo-projector behind her winked on and she turned at the same time. Three people in the entire galaxy had the override to automatically contact her in her bedroom suite. One of them was sleeping on the bed. The other two were together.

Or at least they should have been. Not knowing which she truly feared to see more, Leia was both relieved and disappointed when her brother's hooded figure flickered into half-size projection on her carpet.

The relief died instantly.

Luke looked…old. Granted, she hadn't seen her brother for four years, the last being when he had come to Coruscant to retrieve his nephew, but the passing of time could not account for the ravaged face in front of her now.

"Ben?" she whispered hoarsely, bypassing courtesies in the face of obvious disaster, one hand rising as if she could touch the projection.

Her brother's voice, when it came, sounded even worse than he looked. "Leia…he's gone."

 _No_. She had not heard correctly. "What?" she pushed the word past suddenly-numb lips.

"He's gone. He…someone else discovered him…has been filling his head…" Luke's shoulders caved in as his words failed him.

"Filled his head? What? Luke, please…you're not making sense…" But she could breathe again. Something had happened. Something bad. Something awful. But Ben was not dead. She could not sense that truth in either her twin bond or the thread that linked to her only child.

But that thread…it was clouded. Very, very faint, obscured almost like a bad Holonet connection.

"You won't be able to sense him properly." Even at a distance, Luke recognized the look in his sister's eyes. "He's cloaked himself. He doesn't want to be found."

And like that, the sable eyes snapped back to the Jedi, blazing with terrifying purpose. "Why?"

"Leia…Ben has fallen. He has embraced the Dark Side."

The harsh breathing of a respirator. The tens of thousands of dead in ships across the galaxy that had come under his fire. The strong hands imprisoning her as she watched her home world explode. The man who had commanded and watched dispassionately as Han was incased in carbonite, who had been willing to kill the man she loved merely to prove a theory. The shadow of her childhood, of her adulthood, that had dogged her always, that had reached out a black-gloved hand to twist her world.

The fear that she, too, could fall to this. The real reason she had steadfastly refused her brother and the Force for decades. _No. Not my son. My sweet, curious, happy Ben. Nonononono…_

"How?" and her voice was nearly a snarl. "How could this – how could you _let_ this happen? I thought the Sith were gone, Luke! Vader and the Emperor, they were the last!"

"The Sith come and go, Leia…their greatest strength is that they can hide in the Force until they're ready to reveal themselves. There's a new power rising, a Sith named Snoke. Ben was seduced—"

"Then find him. Bring him back. You are his uncle, the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. You took him from me. You promised he would be safe, that he would learn to be a Jedi. It was all he ever wanted. To be like you. Bring my son back to me." For the first time since she'd met him—

" _Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?"_

—her voice held no mercy, no warmth. This was the general, the woman who had dismantled an Empire.

Luke's exhaustion radiated from the holo-projection, and she could see in his face that her furious words landed like the blows she intended.

"I don't know what there is left of Ben. Snoke has poisoned his mind…told him fables of—" he broke off, averting his gaze, but it didn't take a mind-reader to guess exactly who Snoke had been using to feed lies to her child.

"Vader." Her voice was icier than a Hoth winter storm. Luke winced visibly, but Leia had never been able to stomach calling the Sith Lord 'father'. Her father was Viceroy Bail Organa – a peaceful man killed before his time. Not the monster who had slaughtered tens of millions across thousands of worlds. She claimed Luke through their mother – a Queen and Senator and a founding member of the Rebellion – but never through Vader. As far as she was concerned, the Anakin Skywalker who had given her half her DNA was a myth.

And now her blood-father had been used to corrupt her only son.

"Fix it," she commanded her brother coldly, hatred coursing through her, rising with her fear to choke her. _Your fault!_ she wanted to scream at him. _I trusted you! Han and I both…you're his blood, the last Jedi, the only one at the end of a long line, trained by the best. You were supposed to be able to teach him, to guide him to use his power for the same good that you have done. Save my son!_ "You saved Vader – or so you claim. Find Ben. He's still only a boy. You can easily bring him home."

Luke favored her with a long look – one of those she hated most, one that quietly told her that she didn't understand, because she had refused to accept and train her gifts with the Force, the full extent of the situation.

"Ben is eighteen, Leia. And he…" Even in the projection, she saw her brother's jaw lock, and she knew she didn't want to know—

 _The snapping, blurring sound of a lightsaber in motion. Screaming. The acrid smell of violence, the smoke the blade trailed in its wake when shattering stone, cloth, metal…and flesh._

" _Ben, stop!" That was Luke, his voice hoarse with grief and shock, and she could see through his eyes, the bodies of six students lying fanned out around her son, who stood in the middle of the ring like a parody of a dance, his eyes tinged yellow and his aura swamped in darkness, red blade humming hungrily – and not even breathing hard._

" _Is_ this _what Grandfather offered you, Uncle?" Ben's voice was…not Ben's. It was hard and cold and triumphant and callous. Leia had never heard so foreign a sound, and it grated painfully in her ears. This was not her son. Even his face, twisted by arrogant conviction, looked nothing the same. "This power? This knowledge that you could create or take anything you wanted, even life! with none to stop you?" A laugh, so chilling and distant it echoed the Emperor – inhuman. "You_ don't _know the power of the Dark Side, Uncle. Grandfather tried to show you. But now, he has found a student worthy of his name and his blood!"_

"Stop…" Leia gasped. Luke had not used their bond to send her direct images in years. He had improved his skills. She desperately wished he hadn't.

But Leia was not the only Skywalker to have a fought a war and won it. She had never known what price battling their father directly had extracted from him. _Never wanted to know_ , her unwelcome conscience whispered. She heard some of it now in his quiet desperation.

"He killed six, and badly injured another nine. I cannot risk this again. I can no longer ask parents to give me their children to train with a clear conscience. One of those girls lying on the ground was only ten years old. I have to go, Leia. Perhaps…" he looked as if the next words out of his mouth were swallowing poison, but he was determined to drain the cup, "…perhaps the Empire was right. Maybe it _is_ time for the Jedi to be finished, to allow the galaxy to unfold without the direct interference of agents from the Force."

It was her turn to feel as if she had been struck, anger her only, weakening tether as she teetered on the edge of a vast chasm of loss. Her son and her brother, all in one day. "Luke…"

A half-smile, so achingly sad it seared her heart even through her pain, and she knew then that she was looking at him quite possibly for the last time.

"I am sending Artoo back to you. He's not really mine."

 _Like he's anyone else's,_ she thought caustically, yanking her fury back to the fore, a protective, smothering blanket against the agony threatening to swamp her. She almost told him not to bother. She wouldn't want the droid anywhere near her, every whistle and beep an unceasing reminder of all she'd lost.

"And he will have…instructions. If the right conditions are filled, they will be revealed. But the right conditions may never come to past. I cannot see that future," Luke was continuing.

"And Ben? You're giving up on him? Am I supposed to as well? Is Han? Just let him slide into the Dark?" But much of the fire had left her voice, and she could hear the pleading note underlying what was left, begging him not to go.

"Ben may one day return," Luke said quietly, and there was steel in his tone now. "When he does, we will have to deal with it – and with him, whomever he has become – then. I cannot tell you how sorry I am – how deeply I know that I have failed you. And Han. And Obi-Wan. And even Father. But nothing can be done now. He's made a choice, Leia. He is committed. It will be some time – perhaps a lifetime – before he can reconsider."

She opened her mouth for one more objection, one more protest, one more demand that Luke stay, that he do everything, _anything_ , and the projection lifted his hand.

"Goodbye, Leia. Han was my best friend. You have always been the dearest of my family to me – and I am sorry that I have repaid you both with grief. I hope, one day, to redeem myself. Until then, it is better for the galaxy that I remain lost."

The projection vanished.

Their twin bond was suddenly cloaked as well, and neither the thread to her son nor the strand to her brother vibrated with more than a faint echo, like the barely-there ripples from breadcrumbs tossed into a pond.

Leia stared at the empty spot on the carpet until Han awoke and the nightmare started.

888

 _Present Day_

The empty place where Han should be felt raw, and she could picture a hole in the universe, ragged around the edges where he had been ripped out.

She wanted to blame Luke, and the still-silent connection to her brother that rubbed against the back of her psyche every day, but she couldn't quite bring the necessary justification – or anger – to fill the void.

How much of it was her fault?

" _If you see our son, tell him to come home."_

How much Han's?

" _Can't you see that he's gone, Leia? Luke was right! Ben is lost to us. We have to accept that!"_

How much Luke's?

" _He's made a choice, Leia. He is committed."_

Could she honestly blame her brother for the death of her husband at her son's hands?

" _There's too much of Vader in him."_

She and Han had both said it in those frantic first months after his disappearance, while they scoured the galaxy for the child they had lost. Before the devastation of their grief and anger drove the wedge between them that they had allowed to become permanent.

Han had said it again before he'd left this last time. And then he'd gone after Ben anyway, approached him, gotten close enough to touch him – close enough for the lightsaber to pierce him through.

" _There is good in him, I've felt it. He won't turn me over to the Emperor, I can save him, I can turn him back to the good side. I have to try."_

That had been her brother, not her husband, regarding their father, not her son, but the sentiment remained the same. And suddenly, Leia overwhelming understood _exactly_ what had driven Luke to confront Vader all those years ago.

The same love that had driven Han to Ben, knowing it could mean his death. The same hope that would make her walk to him, to touch him, to embrace him, should she ever get close enough, even though Ben might kill her, too.

"It is never wrong to hope, Leia. And it is never wrong to love."

A hand on her shoulder. Comforting, warm, radiating a calm almost like Luke's, at odds with her sudden tension. A voice she had not heard for years, since the last time she had banished the owner from her presence.

She turned, unable to help herself, wishing she was wrong. The Force-shade standing just behind her on the right was not her brother. Nor was it Han – _it couldn't be, he wasn't a Jedi_ – but another, far more unwelcome.

She recoiled from the hand of Anakin Skywalker, and he lifted it instantly, a look of compassionate sorrow gracing his features.

"Why are you here?" she snapped, and turned back to the almost-dead fire. "Come to gloat?" The fury she could no longer direct at her brother flared full force as it spiraled towards the former Sith. "Congratulations – you have succeeded in taking my son, when you failed with my brother."

A long sigh. But he did not leave, as she had commanded him to do in their previous encounters. "No, Leia. Such insults and insinuations are beneath you. I felt your grief. You could use some solace."

She snorted dismissively. He was right, she could, but he was not the one who could offer it. "From you?" and the answer was in her brusque tone.

"From who else, Daughter?" Her breath hissed as she sucked it in angrily, but he paid her displeasure little mind. "Your estranged husband is dead. Your brother is gone. And your son—"

"—has followed in his grandfather's footsteps," she snarled, facing him. "I'm glad you've been keeping score so that you can continue to meddle in my life, unwanted."

He folded himself down next to her, the faint humming of his shade warming her shoulder and thigh. She shifted not-so-subtly away from him. "You may see this as meddling if you so choose, Leia, but I am seeking nothing from you. Years ago, I left you and Ben alone at your request. I fear now that it was one more wrong decision in a life that has been littered with them."

Silence.

She turned back to the fire. Perhaps, if she ignored him, he would leave. She had no desire to speak to her blood-sire. Not now, not ever. She wished to grieve her loss in peaceful solitude – tomorrow, they would have to send off Rey and Chewie. And her pilots and ground troops would prepare themselves for the next battle against the First Force.

Unexpected exhaustion claimed her. She was so _tired_ of fighting. She had begun as little more than a child, and now she was old enough that her own child fought against her.

"You think I know nothing of grief simply because I was so good at causing it to others?" Anakin asked her gently. "I know too well it's bitter taste. I lost wife and son together. They buried your mother in full state regalia on Naboo, and I – broken and burned and scarred – was not even permitted to bid her farewell."

Leia had seen holos of her mother's funeral – she and Luke had raided the Galactic Archives on Coruscant in their limited spare time after the collapse of the Empire, searching for anything that could be useful for the newly-minted Republic, and stories of their mother.

It was in those old records that she had also seen an image of her father laughing, his handsome face alight with eagerness, storm-blue eyes sparkling at her mother. The image was one she had buried over the years – especially after Ben's defection. She had never been able to reconcile that smile – bright, alive and beautiful, with the mask that had been the terror of the galaxy for her entire childhood.

"But the ceremony was broadcast, of course. They sailed her body down the river, and I could see in the projection the swell of her stomach, surrounded by flowers…and I knew I had lost the only two beings in the galaxy who still had any meaning to me. I also knew I was entirely to blame." The blue eyes, still intense even in ghost form, turned on her, and Leia was shocked to see the gloss of tears in them.

"When I found him, when I discovered Luke was still living…he became my obsession. To have him near me – as student and son – was all I wanted, from the moment I learned his name to instant I stopped breathing. And as for my daughter…you were stolen from me twice. I didn't even know of your existence. I only found out you were mine twenty minutes before my death."

 _What would it have changed if you had?_ Leia thought, looking away, but the edge had worn off her life-long bitterness. She was simply too drained to be angry with him anymore. Darth Vader had been gone for more than half her lifetime.

But his legacy was tainted. Enough to poison her son with his lies.

"If you are so attached to Luke, help him save Ben." The challenge was out of her mouth before she could consider it. "His nephew's defection destroyed him. You spoke of hope – Luke has none. Ben's return would restore it."

Silence.

Then, "He speaks to me, sometimes."

And the rage she had thought gone surged afresh. Leia whirled on her father, wishing he were corporeal, that she might have the satisfaction of strangling him. "And what do you tell him? That he is wrong? That he's broken his mother's heart? That he's ruined his uncle? Or are you too busy feeding his delusions of grandeur, of building the Empire's galaxy where you failed?"

Anakin shook his head, his sorrow rolling off him in waves of the Force that threatened to drown her in their intensity. "You are so angry, Leia," he whispered quietly, "so quick to summon that side of you, to wield it as the weapon it is. I have often been relieved that your hatred of me has led you to deny your Jedi capacities. You are so like me sometimes…I fear what would have become of you if Luke had tried to train you."

Leia stared at him, shock closing her throat as she wanted to scream her defiance, tell him she was _nothing_ like him, she didn't kill worlds, she _saved_ them, but bile rose along with fury, and she could say nothing.

"I said he speaks to me, Leia, not that I reply," Anakin continued. "Not that he is capable of hearing what I have to say." Now his eyes had gone almost grey with distress. "Snoke has made Darth Vader a creature of mythological proportions for Ben, an idol to worship, to strive to emulate. He has presented me as the pinnacle of a Force-user – talented and powerful. And respected. Snoke has carefully left out the fear, the loneliness, the fundamental weakness of standing completely alone. Ben knows nothing of the destruction of my soul and the ruination of my family, the Jedi Order, the _galaxy_ , that paid for the power I wielded."

"Then _tell him_ ," Leia urged, and she felt something loosen inside her. Her father had come to her before – seeking forgiveness and a connection to his daughter that she had flatly refused to grant – but now…now he _could_ help. "Tell him the truth. Show him what it really meant to fall to the Dark Side."

In the Force-shade sitting next to her, she could see the echo of the carefree, laughing man who had loved her mother. She could feel his loss of himself, that man who had been drowned in the Dark, submerged beneath the brutality encouraged by the Emperor. There had soon been none left to pull the other way, to remind him of his humanity, making it ever-easier to succumb to the lure of absolute power and control, to justify the acts committed in pursuit of that goal.

But it did not have to be so for her son. Ben had done a terrible thing in killing those children, in slaying Han, to be sure, but if he could listen to his grandfather, return to Luke for healing, re-learn to use his skills for the Light…

"I will do what I can," Anakin said quietly. "I learned to shut out the Jedi from my past who might have guided me aright through the Force – especially the first, the Jedi who found me and brought me back to Coruscant. I do not know that Ben can hear me, though he has pleaded for me to show him the ways of the Dark Side, to grant him strength. He has inherited our family's legacy, Leia. He is powerful. Even as a newborn, I could sense his presence in the Force. But that kind of power carries a terrible, arrogant temptation with it, the feeling that—"

"—there should always be more. That everything – including life and death – should be within your realm to choose," she finished quietly.

Anakin studied her. "You _have_ felt it."

"No. Not in that way," she answered tiredly. "Though I, too, once suffered from the delusion that once we won, once the Alliance gained ascendancy, we could easily re-mold the galaxy as it should be. No – Ben…Luke told me some of what Ben said that morning, the day he vanished. And that was part of it."

"The same thing we always want," Anakin murmured, and the distance in his Force-lit eyes told Leia that he was looking at a time and place long past.

He re-focused on her. "Luke has been unwilling to speak to me since Ben's fall. Part of it is anger – at me, for tainting your bloodline. Part of it is shame – that he could reach me, already wrapped in the Dark, but failed to rescue the innocence of one training under his direct supervision. He loves your son, as student and nephew, and was very proud of him. Part of it is fear – that his pride in Ben's accomplishments contributed to the boy's thirst for more."

He smiled at her, a gentle smile, the kind of smile a father gives his daughter when she has erred and he is giving her much-needed advice.

"Luke's soul touched mine because he _believed_ in me, Leia. Believed in the goodness that I could no longer identify – believed it with every atom in his body, with every touch he sent into the Force. He _shone_ in the Force like no other being I have ever encountered. And it was his light, the light of my child, of my beloved's child, that penetrated the dark and returned to me some small measure of my humanity." His smile, if possible, became gentler still.

"Did they tell you the last thing Han Solo did before he fell from that bridge?"

Leia closed her eyes, this time in anguish. Rey had haltingly told her the details of Han's death – the way he had walked up to their son, how both had stood for an interminable moment with their hands on Ben's lightsaber. The troubled, tortured boy Rey had seen, struggling in those seconds. The hope, barely given flight, that Ben would give his father the weapon, that he would return with them…and the ignition of the blade, sound and livid red light spearing through Han together.

"Your husband touched your son's face. The blade was inside him, burning through his organs, agonizing him. He knew he was dead. He never looked away. He lifted his hand and rested it against Ben's cheek so that his last touch, like his last sight, would be his boy."

Anakin swallowed. "When I fully embraced the Dark Side, my last memory of the man who had mentored me, had been my brother and my confidant and my best friend, my only true family aside from your mother, was his total disappointment and his anger. That I had not fulfilled the prophecy. That I had not brought balance. He accused me of destroying it."

The distance returned to his gaze, but this was the vague look Leia had learned to recognize in Luke. He was questing, sending those Force senses spiraling out in search of another. She saw the wince, the shadow of pain that distorted his glowing features, and she knew who he had touched.

"Your plea to bring him home, the forgiveness in Han's eyes even when he knew that Ben had killed him…these have affected him. He is…raw. Very angry. Desperate to prove himself – although whether to me, Snoke, his parents or his uncle is uncertain. Confused. And this is a confusion that will grow with time and continued compassion. Snoke will lead him easily for perhaps a little time more – but there is still a great deal of nobility in him. He has not been left hopeless and alone, as I was."

" _It is never wrong to love."_

"He can be saved, then?" Some part of her felt that asking her father this question, longing for an answer that would grant her the right to hope, was absurd. But another part said, _Who would know better? Than one who has fallen into darkness and come out the other side?_

"To his last breath, Leia. Do not give up hope in him."

Silence again, and the faint whisper of the last smoke from the ashy bed of embers.

Anakin rose suddenly, a motion of departure, and Leia glanced up, surprised. He had never been the first to end one of their interviews before.

Then again, she had hardly given him the chance.

"He _will_ return to you. Have faith, Daughter." The Force-shade began to fade, and Leia gave him a smile, the first genuine one in her life. All was not well. But a weight had been lifted. She could feel the stirrings of the hope she had feared dead along with Han.

Anakin had already faded back into the Force by the time she summoned the words. But he felt them, nevertheless.

"Thank you, Father."

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A/N: Please let me know what you think!


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